Walter Coleman
STAND UP AND WALK - THE WORK OF HEALING
Second Week in the Time of Pentecost
The communities of faith and resistance are organized around a core of disciples committed to the faith and to serving the people. As they do the work of the faith, they attract a larger circle of believers who observe what they are doing and participate. Together they reach out every day to more and more people with the message that they should resist, that they should not conform to injustice and they should open their eyes and see that God blesses them with the justice and love of his Kingdom if they will refuse to disown their own people, if they will stand up and walk.
In our faith, we live the gospel story each year. We have come through the amazing ministry of Jesus: His prophetic birth, his announcement that the Kingdom of God could exist on the earth between the willing and faithful hearts of human beings, his confrontation with hypocrisy and injustice, his arrest, crucifixion and resurrection and his final instructions to his disciples to continue his ministry. The disciples were in hiding, fearing they would meet the same fate as Jesus on the cross. Jesus told them to wait for the Holy Spirit to come on them. On the day of Pentecost, they did indeed receive the Holy Spirit. They went out among the people preaching that the Romans had crucified an especially innocent man, a faithful son of God. Three thousand accepted baptism in resistance to the Romans and the Temple police, repenting of their indifference to the injustice done to one of their own.
On the second day, the disciples again went out among the crowd. Peter heard a crippled beggar, sitting outside the gate that led to the Temple, calling to him. Then Peter said, “Look at us!” So, the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
Now Jesus had done many miracles during his ministry, healing many who were sick or blind or crippled. This was the first the disciples had done since his crucifixion, in front of the crowds of people in Jerusalem. If you read carefully, you will see that the people who were healed by Jesus were also people who were excluded from the society, marginalized, discriminated against. Often when they were healed, Jesus told them to go and take their rightful place in the Temple society. He not only healed them of their afflictions, he healed them of their inequality. Although not citizens of Rome, they became citizens of the Kingdom of God through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit –and they could not be denied their rightful place!
When Peter healed the beggar, who had been kept outside the gates of the temple, the temple where you could worship with others in equality and dignity, where you could get work, he told him, “Get up and walk” and the man walked skipping and jumping into the temple from which he had been previously excluded!
We are surrounded by Pentecost. This weekend we gathered with the family of Adam Toledo. We celebrated his life with a new mural in little village, where his life was cut short by a trigger happy, murderous Chicago police officer. Pentecost broke out through the tears and love, through the cries for justice. Most of all, Pentecost broke out in the spirit of those who raised and loved this child, finally able to raise themselves past superficial and hateful accusations, finally able to know this child rested with our Lord in heaven.
We want to dedicate this summer’s work with the Youth Health Service Corps to Adam Toledo, as we train and send out a new brigade of young health workers to fight the pandemic and the twenty year death gap in our community. We have much work to do. The pandemic exposed the racism in this nation’s capitalistic health care system – but the response to the pandemic did not reflect the struggle against this racism.
The pandemic struck hardest and most deadly against those who had conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure but received no treatment for these conditions. It was these who suffered unable to breathe and who died alone separated from their loved ones. Yet with all the resources dedicated to vaccinating millions there has been no correction in diagnosing and providing treatment for those who suffer from diabetes or hypertension, those who were often the “essential workers” that kept us alive during the pandemic, those for whom the pandemic was often fatal.
In our ministry, we began the youth health service corps when President Obama deliberately excluded eleven million undocumented and six million legal permanent residents from his historic national health insurance program. Our objective was to help those excluded to determine early signs of treatable disease like diabetes and heart disease and breast cancer– and to get them the care that would save their lives. During another time of Pentecost, we also found nine undocumented people who needed kidney or liver transplants but who could not get these transplants because they were undocumented. We walked with them to hospitals and sat in until a group came together to provide the needed transplants. When the policy was changed these individuals entered the hospitals as the crippled beggar had entered the temple, “walking and jumping, and praising God.”
Yes, that was a miracle! The Youth Health Service Corps grew to include students from 21 schools and hundreds of medical and nursing students. It has opened the doors to health care for hundreds of people without health insurance. Along the way, we found that even those with health insurance did not receive early detection of treatable diseases and we opened the doors of the temple to them as well.
We found that there existed a twenty-year death gap because of lack of health care in our communities. As we see from the scripture, Jesus not only healed sickness he healed inequality. The twenty-year death gap in our community shows that inequality kills!
Most important, the work of the youth health service corps showed us the way to organize against injustice and to bring people into our communities of faith and resistance by healing, by observation and participation.
When Peter heard the crippled beggar ask him for money, he said, “I have neither silver or gold – but what I do have I will give you – In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, walk!” When we screen people for diabetes or heart disease or breast cancer, when we walk with them into clinics and hospitals to get care, they don’t come with us as beggars. They come as people with basic human rights, with the same right to longer years of life that the wealthy have.
When the people saw the man entering the temple they recognized that he was the same man who had been begging outside the gate every day. They were amazed – but Peter said, “Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? … It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see”….the same Jesus that “You handed over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate.”
Jesus had brought the Good News that the justice of the Kingdom could exist among those who were faithful. He had told those he healed that “it is by your faith that you are healed.” The message of the youth health service corps is that lives can be saved through our faith when we pray and act to “Let the Kingdom of God be on earth as it is in heaven!”
Remember that this is the season of Pentecost. Like the disciples, we are being shown how to organize our communities of faith. The communities of faith and resistance are organized around a core of disciples committed to the faith and to serving the people. As they do the work of the faith, they attract a larger circle of believers who observe what they are doing and participate. Together they reach out every day to more and more people with the message that they should resist, that they should not conform to injustice and they should open their eyes and see that God blesses them with the justice and love of his Kingdom if they will refuse to disown their own people, if they will stand up and walk.
By your faith you are healed! By the faith that the love and justice of the Kingdom should and will live among us you are healed. Stand up and joyfully walk. Stand up and walk together to organize an organizing community, a community that gains strength from each other to bring others to the faith, that will bring a nation to repent of what it has done. In the Spirit of Adam Toledo, Stand up and walk!
As we prepare for communion today let those who will commit to reach out to at least one other person this week, to tell them the Good News that there are communities of faith and resisting that are standing up, to tell them you are not disowning them, to tell them that God loves them and has planted them here with a purpose – let those who will speak to at least one other person this week and bring them here to service next week STEP FORWARD, join the circle of prayer before the altar of Christ and make your commitment. Stand Up and Walk to the front right now! Stand up, Walk, in the name of Jesus and the faith he brought us!
Lord, Lord, Lord, give us the Faith to Stand Up and Walk together. Amen. Dame Fe! Dame Fe!
The Holy Scriptures for the Second Week in the Pentecost
Acts 3: 3-10 Peter Heals a Lame Beggar
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, “Look at us!” So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
Acts 3: 11-15 Peter Speaks to the Onlookers
While the man held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon’s Colonnade. When Peter saw this, he said to them: “Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.
Acts 3: 16-19 “Repent, then, and turn to God”
By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see. “Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord
